Saturday, September 17, 2005

The tourist bitches from hell

Maybe it is us, we think sometimes, walking aroundbeing impatient, unfriendly and demanding but then wethink if that was the case why did we not have theseproblems before?

Today an argument with the car hire people who couldnot give us back the large deposit we had left themjust a few hours before and because they were tryingto get us to pay for more petrol which we actuallyused - lucrative when it is a whopping EUR 2.10 alitre! (We begin to understand why they want tocharge USD 800 for a 700 km trip in a Land Cruiser toAssab).

This scene was followed by us walking out of therestaurant we normally eat at because the waitresswas so unfriendly and rude when cleaning the table andgiving (well throwing) us the menu. I don't think shereally understood WHY we left, bnut maybe one day shewill. Just hope the poor girl doesn't get the sackthough.

On the other hand, we DO have a great time with thegirls in the bar and restaurant of the Khartoum Hotelevery evening and this has sort of become thehighlight of the day for us!

Anyway, we took a car out of teh city, south toDekemhare, as it boasted the name of Naples of Italy(see Naples and die?), with beautiful countryside,favoured by artists and local wines and fruitproduce.We found a dusty market town set amonst some ratherscrappy dry-ish looking countryside. Good for a fewphotos of the colourful market and a goodcappuccino, but not much else. Not sure what happenedto the old Italian villas we were supposed to havefound.

Got to go now... to get that deposit back with as fewtears and stamping around as possible.

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As it happened, all went well, deposit returned and over dinner we had a laugh at ourselves for acting like a couple of spoilt brats. We reckon we have had good reason to get fustrated but really Eritrea has more important things to do than make life easy for us two. And despite the setbacks, we have encountered enough friendliness and kindness for this to have been a positive experience overall, and we wait with baited breath for what the rest of Africa has to offer.